He could guide the mare, though incapable of controlling her. So he sent her at the highest place in the fence before him, and, fast as she was going, the active filly changed her stride on the bank with the accuracy of a goat, landing lightly beyond, to scour away once more like a frightened deer.
"You can jump!" said he, as she threw up the head that had been in its right place hardly an instant, while she steadied herself for the leap; "and I believe you're a flyer. But, by Jove! you're a rum one to steer!"
She was quite out of his hand again, and laid herself down to her work with the vigour of a steam-engine. The daisy-sprinkled turf fleeted like falling water beneath those long, smooth, sweeping strides.
They were careering over an open upland country, always slightly on the rise, till it grew to a bleak brown mountain far away under the western sky. The enclosures were small; but notwithstanding the many formidable banks and ditches with which it was intersected, the whole landscape wore that appearance of space and freedom so peculiar to Irish scenery, so pleasing to the sportsman's eye. "It looked like galloping," as they say, though no horse, without great jumping powers, could have gone two fields.
It took a long Irish mile, at racing pace, to bring the mare to her bridle, and nothing but her unusual activity saved the rider from half-a-dozen rattling falls during his perilous experiment. She bent her neck at last, and gave to her bit in a potato-ground; nor, if he had resolved to buy her for the sake of her speed and stamina while she was running away with him, did he like her less, we may be sure, when they arrived at that mutual understanding, which links together so mysteriously the intelligences of the horse and its rider.
Turning homewards, the pair seemed equally pleased with each other. She played gaily with the snaffle now, answering hand and heel cheerfully, desirous only of being ridden at the largest fences, a fancy in which he indulged her, nothing loth. Trotting up to four feet and a half of stone wall, round her own stable-yard, she slipped over it without an effort, and her owner, a discerning person enough, added fifty to her price on the spot.
"She's a good sort," said the soldier, patting her reeking neck, as he slid to the ground; "but she's uncommon bad to steer when her monkey's up! Sound, you say, and rising four year old? I wonder how she's bred?"
Such a question could not but entail a voluminous reply. Never, it appeared, in one strain, had been united the qualities of so many illustrious ancestors. Her pedigree seemed enriched with "all the blood of all the Howards," and her great-great-great-grandam was "Camilla by Trentham, out of Phantom, sister to Magistrate!"
"An' now ye've bought her, Captain," said our friend in frieze, "ye've taken the best iver I bred, an' the best iver I seen. Av' I'd let her out o'my sight wanst at Ballinasloe, the Lord-Liftinint 'ud have been acrass her back, while I'm tellin' ye, an' him leadin' the hunt, up in Meath, or about the Fairy House and Kilrue. The spade wasn't soldered yet that would dig a ditch to hould her; and when them sort's tired, Captain, begorra! the very breeches 'ud be wore to rags betwixt your knees! You trust her, and you trust me! Wait till I tell ye now. There's only wan thing on this mortial earth she won't do for ye!"